“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair… Come to it any way but lightly.”

“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”

“Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”

“Stuart must have sensed my despair from the way I began lightly banging my forehead on the table.”

“It's not the despair, Laura, I can stand the despair. It's the hope.”

“If you focus on sandbagging the beachhead, you can ignore the tsunami that's approaching. Try it any other way and you'll go crazy.”

“If you are wise, mingle these two elements: do not hope without despair, or despair without hope.”
Si sapis, alterum alteri misce: nec speraveris sine desperatione nec desperaveris sine spe.

“Who can hope for nothing should despair of nothing.”

“It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise”

“And the other Don Quixote remained here among us, fighting with desperation. And does he not fight out of despair? …But "despair is the master of possibilities," as we learn from Salazar y Torres (Elegir al enemigo, Act I.), and it is despair and despair alone that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, mad hope. Spero quia absurdum [I hope because it is absurd], it ought to have been said, rather than credo”